Monday March 31, at Governor DeWine’s afternoon press conference, he announced Ohio's public schools would remain on the extended break through at least Friday, May 1. In addition several other changes were made last week with the legislature's passage of House Bill 197. This bill goes into effect immediately and impacts the following:

Courses and assignments students complete online will count toward minimum hours of instruction required by state law. Therefore, we will not have make-up days later in the year. However, learning must continue online, and the state minimum requirements of learning hours must still be met. Students will need to continue to do their daily work and communicate with their teachers. We have task our staff to provide a minimum of 120 minutes of instructional enrichment per day for our students PreK-12. This online enrichment and instruction started officially on March 27th has been challenging not only for our educational community, but represents a significant change for our students. The following represents some of the other changes House Bill 197 represents:

All K-12 standardized testing for students is waived for this year and will not occur. Students will not be penalized or held accountable for not having completed the state assessments.

Special
education services can and should be delivered electronically or via
telecommunication.

School
districts were granted the authority to graduate any student who the
district considers to be “on track” to graduate. This allows us to grant a
diploma to any senior the school district determines as having met the
requirements for graduation. Our counselor will make contact with seniors
to discuss what the student must complete by the end of the year to be
eligible for graduation.

The Third Grade Reading Guarantee has been temporarily suspended. Therefore, our current third graders are exempt from being retained in the third grade, unless the principal and reading teacher determine the child is significantly behind. More information will come soon to third-grade families.

Local governments, including boards of education, are permitted to hold remote/virtual meetings. However, the public must still have access to view, hear, and participate in meetings, as defined by Board Policy. We are currently working on options to allow this to occur, should our Board of Education decide to do so. Regardless, we will notify the public in advance as to how we will proceed.

Districts are permitted to continue to provide lunch to children 18 and under while on the extended break. Trimble Local will continue to provide three breakfasts and three lunches every Monday, and two breakfasts and two lunches every Thursday. We will serve meals the week April 13 – 17 on Tuesday and Thursday as Monday the April 13th is a scheduled day off. We will resume the Monday and Thursday
meal service starting the week of April 20.

While this situation
has been challenging for us all, our purchase of Chromebooks last school year
for K-12, our move toward blended learning, the use of google classroom and the
continued commitment of our staff and community has allowed us to forge ahead in
this changing educational climate.